Hillary Speaks Fluent Pennsylvanian

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are senators with Ivy League law degrees. They each have a strong, vocal spouse and can stump speech, debate and wonk their way around policy with ease. These two politicians are more alike than they are different, though so far, most observers have given Clinton the edge on the debate stage and Obama the advantage in addressing campaign rallies. But when communicating the populist message that most pundits think is needed to win the blue-collar heart of my state on primary day, which is fast approaching on April 22, Hillary Clinton has the Pennsylvania vernacular down pat.

If it was “the economy, stupid” when Bill Clinton was running, it’s “the vernacular, smarty” this time around. Granted, Hillary Clinton spent her summers as a youth in Scranton, a Pennsylvania connection that Barack Obama cannot match, even with the support of Senator Bob Casey; but still, look at the difference in the use of language. Here’s one of Hillary Clinton’s Pennsylvania stump speech messages:

I met with a group of truck drivers in Harrisburg yesterday. They are pretty fed up with high fuel prices and they were making their opinions known. Who is listening? I’m listening, but it doesn’t seem like the White House is listening. The president is too busy holding hands with the Saudis to care about American truck drivers who can’t afford to fill up their tank any longer. I meet workers all over Pennsylvania and elsewhere who lost their pensions; they have seen companies go into bankruptcy and discharge their obligations. We have a vice president, who, when he was CEO of Halliburton—which now gets all these no bid contracts, don’t they, from the government?—workers lost $25 billion in pensions. But Dick Cheney got to strap on a golden parachute worth $20 million. You get tax breaks to people who don’t need them while our children get stuck with the bill.

Hillary Clinton can also tell us that her dad played football for Penn State and that she remembers playing pinochle, but even without the connection she seems to embody the heart and soul of that fed up worker in a way that seems to resonate more honestly than her opponent. True, it helps that she and her brother were baptized in Scranton and spent their summers on nearby Lake Winola. But Hillary Clinton is able to communicate that she is just like one of us better than Barack Obama, who arguably had a more “up from the bootstraps” American experience than hers was.

In the photo in The New York Times from his visit, Barack Obama looked like he was floating above the crowd, perched upon a raised platform with the 22,000-strong crowd around him at Penn State’s University Park campus in State College, Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “he sipped a Yuengling [beer] in Latrobe; fiddled with a Slinky in Johnstown; tasted a chili dog and bowled a 37 in Altoona [he managed to joke about that later]; fed a calf in State College; sampled homemade chocolates in Lititz; toured a garment factory in Allentown; and nibbled on cheese at Philadelphia’s Italian Market.”

When I saw him speak at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, I was struck by his aloofness, his sophisticated air and, most of all, his choice of words. In his speeches, he has discussed habeas corpus and the “precipitous” war. In Allentown he boasted: “I spoke with [College Football Hall of Fame head coach] Joe Paterno on the phone.” Hmmm, not exactly reaching out and touching someone. Chris Matthews of MSNBC noted the incongruity, commenting, “I think Barack Obama is more New Haven than Allentown.”

Does any of this matter? The double-digit lead Hillary Clinton had in Pennsylvania is shrinking since Barack Obama came into the state to campaign, and they’ll meet head-on again to debate next week. Yet, so far Hillary Clinton has done a more effective job at appearing more “of the people” to us Pennsylvanians. In less than two weeks we’ll find out.